


We Never Go Anywhere Nice

by adventuresofmeghatron



Series: Reclamations [2]
Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Bonding Through Terror and Trauma, Established Relationship, F/M, M/M, Multi, Murder Mystery, Overtures of Future Polyamory, Pining, Pre-Poly, Spooky, so much pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2020-10-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:41:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27128719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adventuresofmeghatron/pseuds/adventuresofmeghatron
Summary: Deacon, Natasha, and MacCready investigate a lead in a case of several missing ghouls and find themselves spending the night in a house hiding secrets in plain sight.
Relationships: Deacon/Robert Joseph MacCready/Female Sole Survivor, Robert Joseph MacCready/Female Sole Survivor, Robert Joseph MacCready/Sole Survivor
Series: Reclamations [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1944889
Comments: 36
Kudos: 33





	1. Natasha

**Author's Note:**

  * For [electricshoebox](https://archiveofourown.org/users/electricshoebox/gifts).



> This is birthday fic for electricshoebox, who is such a kind and wonderful person. Thank you for your endless encouragement and tireless support. I hope you have a lovely day <3
> 
> Because I was feeling the spooky season, this one is a mix of flirty pre-relationship encounters, and encounters of a creepy kind. Also, corniness might be the component that's holding everything together in this mix. So, you know, fair warning on that front!
> 
> This will be told in three parts, with a chapter from each of our protagonists' point of view.
> 
> Our triad are still a couple and their very, very close “friend” (hmmmm) at this point. It’s not necessary to have read my other work to enjoy this one, but for those who have, this is set maybe a month or so after No Rest For the Wicked. But, inching closer to where we see them in In the Name of Love.
> 
> Content Warnings: For parts two and three in particular, there are some grisly parts. At its worst, it’s maybe Pickman Gallery level gory. But everyone’s squicks are different. Proceed with care knowing there’s a fair amount of...body parts that are there for plot purposes. I tried not to be overly gratuitous with it.

“It’s just like I told the general. Raiders swarming in these hills. Coming and snatching folks in the night, buzzing back to their filthy hives.”

Natasha shifts her weight, letting the russet gravel crunch beneath the heel of her boot. Her “farmer” is a withered prune of a man, with wiry red veins cobwebbing the cutting blue of his eyes. His hands fidget fretfully at the wilted belt loops along the waist of his faded jeans. 

“It’s a damn tragedy, is what it is.” The platitude rattles hoarsely from the thin line of his lips.

A cool wind ruffles through Natasha’s hair and tangles in the unkempt fields. Natasha keeps the man pinned in her periphery while she sweeps her sights across his homestead. The gravel crinkles underfoot, like discarded wrappers. Parched, cracked dirt. Tightly packed. No spring when you step. 

Gnarled grass eats into the edges of the disused road. Hidden in the fronds, she can just make out the bricks that lay a path from the road to the blackened husk of the house looming over it all. It’s a sagging, miserable, ramshackle two-story. Another ruin of the old world. In its prime, Natasha imagines the wrap-around porch was home to a nice swing, and tired feet kicked up on the rim of the railing. But the wear and tear of centuries hasn’t been kind. Whatever life and color it held before, there’s no sign of it now. Only dark windows that yawn like empty pits.

Natasha saunters into the shadow cast from the silo rooted on the other side of the road. In the glare of the sun drooping in the sky, the silhouette burns bright against the red dirt. She can even make out the lines of the ladder clinging to its side.

Idly, Natasha flips the pocket knife in her hands open and then closed again. The farmer catches her motion and stiffens. Open and closed. The light glints off the surface.  
  
“What do you grow here, Mister...?”

“Grantham,” he answers stiffly. “Tatoes, mostly. Mutfruit, too.”

“Soil isn’t right for either of those.”

“Well, we keep them in the greenhouse, of course. I’ll show you.”

Natasha angles the knife, watching the sunlight sear then slink from the flat of the blade. She glimpses a look at the world behind her shoulder.

“There’s no greenhouse out back, Mr. Grantham. No raiders in a seven-mile radius, either.”

Boots crunch in the dirt behind her.

A sneer curls across Grantham’s face. “No need to cut a weed that goes where it’s guided. You’ll come along quietly to the greenhouse now.”

“Thing is,” Natasha mirrors his smile, “I _don’t_ come quietly. Usually don’t do it alone, either.”

The gunshot cracks the air like glass. Her farmer flinches. The body behind Natasha careens to the dirt and drags to a stop beneath the heel of her shoe. A perfect red bullseye leaks blood from the back of his skull. 

Muffled gunfire sputters from the house. Grantham jerks towards the building, stumbling a half-step towards it before Natasha’s levels her pistol to his forehead. Wild-eyed and seething, she watches him tremble in between fear and rage.

Seconds later, the doorway opens and a body spills onto the porch. Deacon emerges from inside, neatly side-stepping the bloody heap on his way out. 

And what a mess he’s made. Natasha’s resolve falters as she catches sight of Deacon’s tee, splattered in brilliant red. How much of that is _his?_ His face, half-hidden behind shades and a stony expression, gives no tells.

“Word of advice,” Deacon drawls. “Might want to workshop your bullshit a little more before you put it on display. Nobody’s buying it if it stinks that bad. Take it from an expert.”

“Start talking,” Nat grunts, tightening her grip on the pistol. “If it keeps smelling, I promise I’ll stop you.”

Slowly, Grantham raises his arms above his head, and shuffles, stricken, towards Natasha. For a few seconds, she watches the quiver in his lip. When it sharpens to a smile, her heartbeat kicks against her ribs.

His voice is a guttural, slithering sound that slaps like a whip. “The world will be born anew in the light of Atom! Remade by righteous flesh! And none shall tread upon this earth that are unworthy!”

Natasha watches, transfixed, as Grantham points a finger in her direction in the same manner her pistol aims towards him. The words boom from his chest and drip in spit from his lips, as if he’s throwing every ounce of his strength behind them. 

“You _will_ see! At the pinnacle of darkness, there _will_ be light!”

“Okay, yeah, _no,_ ” Deacon sighs. “That’s creepy. Fuck all of that.”

Natasha’s eyes flicker from Deacon to Grantham, whose eyes bulge as his mouth stretches and strains around his garble. She fires. 

Grantham slumps to the ground. His lips flutter with phantom twitches while the light flees his eyes.

“Gross,” Deacon mumbles.

“Are you okay?” Natasha doesn’t wait for an answer. She steps over Grantham’s body to investigate the gory stains on Deacon’s shirt. Her fingers barely graze his collarbone when something reels her back. Natasha stumbles with a stuttered cry. The tether pulls taut at her ankle. Twisting around, she sees Grantham’s white-knuckled grip pinching her leg in place. He yanks. Natasha teeters perilously, until something solid brings her back in balance. 

“Last mistake, pal.” Deacon murmurs against her ear. His arms rope around her waist, setting her steady. Natasha leans back against Deacon’s chest and fires three rounds into Grantham’s skull.

And then, as an afterthought, just one more. To empty the mag, and her frustrations. Grantham’s grip fades on his last breath. 

Deacon’s doesn’t. She can feel the pattern of his pulse thrumming against her shoulder. Some time later, Deacon peers down at Nat from beneath his shades. At this angle, she catches the color of his eyes while she catches her breath. Gray, cloudy, with the barest trace of blue seeping through.

“You good?” He asks softly. His whisper tickles the tip of her nose.

“Yeah, I think so.” The hem of his sleeve slips, bearing the edge of nasty slice down his arm. Nat pulls the fabric aside to investigate further. “What’s this?”

“Just a scrape.” Deacon shifts his arm away and the sleeve covers the wound once more. Nat scowls, preparing to voice her protest, when the pad of his thumb brushes gently across her cheek. “You got a little something here.”

“Piece of dead farmer?”

“Now, if it was dead farmer, I would leave it. You know, let you soak in the nutrients. This here is dead _liar._ Not even a good one, either. Horrible for your skin.” 

It’s not until he pulls away that Nat notices the breath she’d held captive the whole time. Her exhale slips out with the slide of his arm from her waist.

Fresh footsteps crunch their way, followed by a familiar voice.

“Heard more shots. Everything all right?” MacCready picks his way from the base of the old grain silo.

“We’re good,” Deacon calls back. “Farmer Joe just got a little grabby with Nat on his way out.”

Mac reaches the road, brows knit together as he studies the pair of bodies in the dirt. “Saw you shoot him,” he says to Nat. “Thought you’d be sure he’s dead before you turn your back on him. Not like you to make a rookie mistake.”

Nat crosses her arms. “I was worried about _this_ one.” She nudges Deacon’s side. “He’s hurt, but he won’t let me look at it.”

Deacon coughs a laugh. “Nat, I’m--”

“Jesus,” MacCready whistles. “You look like you got mauled by a deathclaw!”

“Most of it isn’t mine,” Deacon offers weakly.

“Bad enough that some of it is,” Mac chides. Before Deacon gets another word in edgewise, MacCready’s rolling up the sleeve on Deacon’s arm. “No use in playing coy about it.”

“I’m not--”

“Good,” Mac smirks. He slides a stimpack from his belt and into Deacon’s arm. Deacon falls into defeated silence while Mac works, except for a hiss that leaks from his lips when the alcohol stings against his skin. 

“So,” MacCready says, “what kind of crazy did we get ourselves into?”

“Fanatical,” Nat murmurs, kicking at the corpse of the would-be farmer. “Something culty. Mentioned Atom. Yelled a bunch of mangled crap at me before we canned him. Didn’t care enough to come up with a decent lie. Maybe cocky enough to think they wouldn’t need to, if they really believed I was alone. Which, he _wasn’t,_ apparently. How many did you find inside, Deacon?”

“A handful,” Deacon says. “Some were already taking the long nap. Must’ve been some infighting in the compound. But, about inside, though...” He winces. “Might be easier to show you.”

“Let me take a lap first,” Nat decides. “Double check the perimeter.”

“There’s nothing for miles,” Mac swipes his hat from his head to knuckle fingers through his hair. “No raiders, no radroaches, or mirelurks, or deathclaws. Nothing ‘til you hit Salem. No reason to even stumble on this place, unless it’s by accident.”

“Bad accident for all those settlers,” Deacon murmurs darkly. “How many did Preston say have gone missing?”

“Ten,” Nat answers grimly. “Trail ends here, for all of them. Can’t be an accident. Preston told me they have reports of plenty of humans passing by here without a problem. Every single one of our missing settlers is a ghoul. They’ve got a _type._ ”

“Just a heads up,” Deacon adds, “If the smell inside was any indicator, it really did _end_ here for all of them.”

“Shoot,” Nat sighs.

Mac squeezes Nat’s shoulder. “We’ll search the place. At least we can let the families know what happened, so they won’t be wondering forever.”

She leans her head against MacCready’s arm. A faint smile flickers on her face. “That was a really nice shot, you know.”

“Yeah?” Mac perks beneath the praise. He presses a kiss to the top of her head. “You kept him nice and steady for me. Sitting target. And Deeks busting out of the house? Perfect timing. ”

Warmth flutters in Natasha’s chest. She winks at Deacon. “Guess we put on a good show. I’m gonna take that lap now. You two behave.”

Deacon smirks in her direction. “No promises, _krasavitsa_.”

Natasha stops in her tracks, eyes trailing back to Deacon as a flush warms her cheeks.

“What, did I butcher it?”

Mac blinks between the two of them. “What does that one mean, again?”

Deacon’s confidence falters. “Uh...smart cookie, right?”

“No,” Nat shakes her head. “That’s _umnitsa_. Krasavitsa means ‘keep practicing’.”

The heat on her skin fades beneath the biting breeze. Natasha meanders through the swaying grass, shivering every so often as the brisk air nips beneath her borrowed scarf - one of Mac’s. 

It’s not the first time they circled around the decrepit farmhouse, but it’s the closest look they’ve gotten yet. Against the grain of time, it holds fast to its form, decrepit though it may be. The slats of the roof are peeling the railing along the porch is mostly splinters, and the whole thing looks like it could topple in the slightest storm. 

Yet, there’s no holes in the siding. No gaps in the roof. No sign of haphazard wasteland repairs to patch over any imperfections. The windows hold grimy, but resilient glass. Airtight, in spite of an apocalypse.

And not a greenhouse in sight, despite its former owner’s proclamation.

Natasha rounds the bend back towards the front. With a cursory glance to her surroundings, she confirms the coast is clear: nothing rustles around her but wind. She changes course towards the porch. Wiping away the film of filth with the edge of her sleeve, she peers through a window into the dim interior.

Something snaps in the brush behind her. Nat half-turns before she feels the warm pads of fingers ghost against her wrist. She freezes in place. Three little thrums, tapping on her skin. _Follow me,_ Deacon says. It’s a language they formed together in between crypts and sewer tunnels and life and death.

One long tap. Two short. _I’ve got your back._

“Dee--” she cuts herself short as voices drift her way. Familiar voices. Natasha creeps slightly forward. The rhythm on her wrist grows frantic.

_Follow me. Follow me. Follow me--_

They slip into sight: MacCready and Deacon. Together. Just where she left them. 

_Follow me. Follow me. FOLLOW ME._

Panic squeezes in her chest. Natasha whirls around, pistol drawn. 

Nothing. She scans the empty fields, eyes chasing after the ripple of the wind that cuts through the grass. She flinches at the slightest crackle in the weeds. Her heart still thrums in her throat, even as she shakes her head.

 _You’re losing it_. Natasha traces the inside of her wrist, where she felt the imprint, so real, so insistent. Something gritty greets her touch. She looks down.

Three fingerprints, marked in dirt, swirl against her skin. Bile rises in her throat.

“Nat! Hey, Nat!”

She jolts around. Mac waves, ushering her back their way. Nat casts one last wary glance to her surroundings before trudging back to the front of the house. 

By the time she reaches them, the breeze has kicked up to buffeting wind. Gray, billowy clouds roil overhead.

“Some weather we’re having,” Deacon comments dryly.

Metallic lightning clangs through the skies, punctuating the sentiment. Vivid green flashes lurk within the brewing storm. The PipBoy on Natasha’s wrist crackles fitfully.

“Shi-- shoot,” Mac grumbles. “Gonna have to hunker down inside ‘til it passes.”

Deacon grimaces. “So, about that inside thing…”

Nat raises a brow. “You mentioned something was off about it before.”

“Yeah,” Deacon assents. “That’s one word for it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Parts two and three should be up sometime over the next week :)
> 
> If you are so inclined, please do feel free to feed the writer kudos and comments if you enjoyed <3


	2. MacCready

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Deacon, MacCready, and Natasha search the house for clues.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy actual bday to electricshoebox!
> 
> Content Warnings: A bit more blood and gore in this one, just an FYI.

“Oh _ what the fuck.  _ Frick! Shoot! Sorry!”

MacCready stumbles backwards, rifle gripped tightly. Wind whistles from the porch through the open door, carrying a cold rain with it. Lightning forks through the clouds, casting booming echoes that reverberate with a radioactive shudder.

“No worries,” Deacon saunters through the doorway. “We’ll give you a freebie on this one.”

Natasha stands at the heart of the foyer, spinning to take in the view. “Guess there really is a greenhouse. Sort of.”

MacCready creeps forward after Nat and Deacon. The door creaks a long, petulant whine before slamming shut on the next gust. Mac jolts with the sound, nerves like spiders crawling on his skin. He swallows. The house it is, then. 

Right. The house. If that’s what you called this nonsense.

Bright green vines spread like veins across the walls. The growth sprawls over the floors and winds around the railings to the grand staircase that climbs to the second story. Peering upwards, MacCready sees the tendrils coiled around a series of chandeliers dangling from the ceiling. 

Yet, underneath the overgrowth, polished wood gleams along the walls, dark and rich in color. The floor beneath the knotted plants is marble. Dizzying swirls of red and white hues paint the stonework. Everywhere he looks, MacCready finds lavish touches: velvety curtains of a deep emerald green without a hint of dust, pre-war furniture without so much as a stain, and ageless glass shimmering from a long mirror in the entryway.

Like time had never touched this place at all. 

MacCready doubles back, gagging. “Christ, what is that  _ smell _ ?”

A sour odor permeates the air. The stench sprouts water in his eyes.

Deacon pinches his nose. “That would be the dead people. Not this one. He’s fresh.” Deacon nudges aside a leaking body. MacCready wrinkles his face in disgust.

“God, what did these lunatics  _ do _ to them to make it smell like  _ that _ ?”

“We'll have time to find out,” Nat murmurs grimly. “Stuck in here until that storm blows over.”

“Frick,” Mac mutters. “Why don’t we ever go anywhere nice?”

“This place _ is _ pretty nice. Or, it could be, with some generous pruning.” Deacon teases. “Carpet doesn’t really match the drapes, though. Wonder what’s up with how it looks on the outside."

A soft knock raps behind him. MacCready jumps, jerking his rifle towards the door. Natasha flashes him a guilty smile. The door moans as she opens it to inspect the entryway. Rain rushes in. She slides it quickly shut. 

“It’s a facade,” she says. “Just a shell, an outer layer. To hide the real house. Or, to keep whatever this is in.” She toes the vines suspiciously. “This species seems...aggressive.”

“That’s just great,” Mac groans.

“Aw, are you not having a good time, Bobby?” Deacon smirks, pocketing his shades. “Had you pegged for an easy scare. Good to know I was right.”

“I’m not fricken  _ scared, _ ” Mac snipes. “Look, all this polished pre-war sh-- crap? Stinks like Cabot House. Well, Cabot House didn’t stink. But--”

“Wait,” Deacon tilts his head. “Is that the place where you asked me to swipe the--”

“ _ Shh! _ ”

Deacon perks a brow. “Hate to be the one to break it to you, but she  _ knows _ you like to steal from the old rich people.”

“What?” Nat feigns ignorance as she trails a hand along the paneled walls. “Bobby?  _ Never _ .”

“Didn’t know they were  _ this _ kind of crazy,” Deacon adds. “Heads up might’ve been nice.”

MacCready shrugs. “Don’t worry. We killed the weird alien dad.”

“Mac,” Nat snickers, “he wasn’t an  _ alien. _ Definitely crazy, though.” 

“He had an old hat that made him say creepy sh-- crap.” MacCready grumbles. 

“Weird alien dad?” Deacon drawls. “And you steal from these people? Regularly? Aren’t you worried about extraterrestrial vengeance?”

The only answer Deacon gets is an eye roll. But Mac musters a small smile when Natasha brushes past him, fingertips gently grazing his before she takes the lead towards the next room. His hand glides against her wrist as she goes. Something grainy rubs across his palm.

MacCready falls into step behind her, puzzling over the dark smear he glimpses on her skin. “Nat, you got something on your wrist.”

She gives a cursory glance to where he gestures. For a moment she stares, fixated. Then, she dusts the dirt away. 

“I, uh, must’ve bumped up against something.”

MacCready peers through an archway into the next room over. More uncanny artifacts from another time: a lengthy dining room table roped in ivy, and chairs tied taut to the floorboards by thick vines. Not a wrinkle of age or speck of dust in sight. MacCready feels the pit sink deeper in his stomach.

“Sure it wasn’t just Mac?” Deacon nudges his shoulder. “You’re looking a little rugged, pal.”

“ _ Ha-ha _ .” Mac huffs, but finds his quip cut short when he looks at Deacon.

Right. He took the sunglasses off. Mac watched him do it. Makes sense, anyway. It’s growing dark inside. None of the chandeliers woke to their entry. Only thin, pallid light leaks in from the filmy windows. But then, that never really stopped Deacon before. Always doubled-down when it came to playing out a bit.

But he’s  _ not _ playing a bit. Deacon’s grip on his pistol hasn’t eased an inch since they’ve stepped inside. There’s an edge to the playful half-light angling off Deacon’s face. As he watches, Deacon’s breath seems to ghost in the air like smoke.

“Frick, it’s cold in here,” Mac mumbles.

“Yeah, it is,” Deacon frowns, brows knit together. “Didn’t notice it so much before.”

“Didn’t pack for it, either, looks like,” Mac glances skeptically at Deacon’s bloodsoaked tee. It clings, still damp, against the ridge of his collarbone, down the slope of his chest. 

“Wasn’t it warmer outside?” Deacon rubs his hands against his arms to warm them. 

Mac’s scowl deepens. He tugs his scarf loose from his neck. “Here.”

Deacon glances at the fabric. His brow furrows further. “I’m fine, Mac, really--”

“Take it. You’re gonna be shivering enough with those arms out like that.”

Tentatively, Deacon takes it, the curl of a smirk turning up his lips. It’s a good look on him. Brings out his eyes. Makes them look brighter. 

The  _ scarf _ . It’s a good--  _ the scarf is a good look on him. _

Maybe it’s not so chilly inside, after all. There’s a sudden bloom of heat that itches against his neck where the scarf used to rest. MacCready coughs to clear his throat, then meanders after Natasha.

“Guys!” Nat’s voice finds them from down a skinny hallway. “Come check this out!”

They follow Nat’s shout to a vast room lined with the shattered remnants of clay planters. Twining greenery spills from the broken pots onto the floor in gnarled, twisting heaps. The overgrowth half-chokes the open doorway; the three of them peer from the hallway into the swell of vines that pours from the room to snake through the rest of the house. 

“Someone forgot to trim their hedges,” Deacon murmurs in his ear. In spite of himself, MacCready snickers.

“T-this just keeps getting weirder.” Natasha’s stutter stokes a twinge of alarm in MacCready’s chest. She shivers, hands tucked tight beneath her arms. From the corner of his eye, he catches Deacon’s hand moving to his borrowed scarf.

“Hey, take this,” Mac tugs the duster off his shoulders and drapes it over hers. 

Nat peers back at him skeptically. “You’re gonna freeze. It’s s-so cold in here.”

“I’m gonna be fine,” Mac smooths friction down her arms. “Besides, you’ll warm me up if I’m not, right?” He brushes a thumb across her cheek, cupping the fading warmth of her skin. 

Nat offers a faint smile and the slightest of nods. “Let’s see what else this madhouse has for us.” 

Their search unfolds like a mismatched jigsaw puzzle; each room is a disparate piece somehow forced to fuse with the others with little rhyme or reason to be found. The vines coil around the legs of the lounge chairs in the living rooms and gag the wide, yawning fireplace at its center. Beneath it all, the luxurious trappings line the place from top to bottom. Ornamental rugs, gold-spined books filling a wall of shelves, and even a holotape player all dwell beneath the ever-present, ever-pressing stench of rot tainting every pristine thread. Deacon plucks a few of the tomes from the wall as they pass through, fluttering briefly through the pages before tossing them aside.

“They’re all blank,” Deacon elaborates. MacCready doesn’t miss the drop of disappointment in his voice that matches the thud of another empty hardcover against the floor.

But the finery frays thin when they reach the east wing. A sawhorse dominates the otherwise bare half of the room, alongside an assortment of hammers, drills, and other assorted tools. On the other half, white sheets drape across hidden somethings, forming peaks and valleys where whatever lies beneath pulls them taut. The fabric spills over the unfinished floor. 

“Look alive,” Nat says warily.

MacCready stalks forward, but stops abruptly when he glimpses the edge of the hardwood. 

Chewed. The end of the floorboards looks...chewed. Or, he squints forward, hunching to a squat, maybe  _ melted. _ Still, no scorch marks scuff the deep, burgundy hue. Strange, the colors here are mismatched. Most of the wood is a lighter hue that reminds him of razorgrain. MacCready’s eyes trail back to the sheets. 

No mismatched floors, after all. Just bloody ones.

The old stain seeps over the wrinkles in the sheets, and onto the wood, and even past it’s edge to the unrefined concrete near the sawhorse, where a separate incident left little red splatters on the ground. 

He tracks the path back from the sawhorse, to the gnawed edge of the wood, to the sheets, and beneath his own feet. Slowly, MacCready straightens and staggers backwards.

Something clicks, like fingernails against glass. Anxious. Crackling. Ticking.  _ Behind him. _

“What is that?!” MacCready whirls around. His rifle smacks against something hard, tall, and looming beneath the sheets. The impact sends him sprawling backwards with a shout.

**GONG.**

Booming chimes blare back at him. Natasha grips the cover in one hand, pistol poised in the other, and pulls.

**GONG.**

An elderly clock stares back at him - the grandpa kind. Busy hands spin across its glass-covered face. A pendulum swings down the front. 

**GONG.** MacCready flinches.

Natasha’s laughter blots out the ensuing echoes from the old clock. Three more chimes marks six o’clock. She’s still snorting into her hands by the time they’ve finished. 

Deacon’s no better. He leans against the doorway, body seized in silent snickers. When he’s caught his breath, he shakes his head, grinning. “Remind me to  _ never _ bring you on a stealth job.”

“Yeah, yeah, you guys done yet?” MacCready sulks.

He has his answer when Nat offers him a hand up. 

“Got more stuff on your arm,” he comments with a frown.

“Oh,” she shrugs. “Weird. Maybe it’s from the plants or something.” She rubs it away without a second glance. 

“Nothing underneath these sheets except more furniture,” MacCready grouses. “They’re running out of places to hide these bodies. If they’re even in here, after all.”

“Gotta be,” Nat insists. “Too much is off about this place. Come on, let’s go check out upstairs.”

If the east wing was unfinished, the upstairs is only a shell. The greenery comes to an abrupt halt along the jagged edge of the hardwood. Bare brick takes its place past a heavy, metal door that leans open. Scorch marks pepper the floor.

“Guess they didn’t get to renovate up here yet,” Deacon comments dryly.

He’s right; the concrete bunker seems starkly out of place with the ostentatious touches of the rest of he house, invasive plant growth aside. A sagging wire bed frame cradles a single, mottled gray mattress. A kitchenette dominates another wall. Most of the room is littered with tools, like the ones they found downstairs. Saws, hammers, wrenches, even a few blowtorches. Natasha peers past the shadow of a ladder and recoils abruptly, hiding her face in her elbow.

“Yeah, sorry, should’ve warned you,” Deacon comments sheepishly. “Those were gone before we got here.”

MacCready chokes back a cough when the bodies come into view. Three of them, laid out, one by one, arms crossed over their chests. All of them, human. 

“What the hell happened to them?” MacCready winces. “Looks like they’ve been….like something tried to--”

“Eat them,” Nat finishes grimly. “Didn’t get to finish, though.”

“Maybe our ghoul friends fought back,” Deacon posits. 

“Think I’d go feral myself if someone tried to do this to me,” MacCready mumbles.

“We still don’t  _ know _ what they did,” Nat says dejectedly. “Searched the whole place, and no sign of the missing ghouls.” 

MacCready feels her prickle of frustration as she kicks at the scuffs in the brick. His eyes trail back to the lone mattress in the corner. “Why’s there only one bed? Had to be a half dozen of those nutjobs in here.”

“Maybe it’s  _ that _ kind of cult,” Deacon waggles an eyebrow.

“I don’t want to sleep in here, anyway” Nat murmurs, shivering. “See that vent? It’s  _ freezing  _ in here.”

MacCready follows the point of her finger to the slats on the bottom of the wall, beneath the bed. Sure enough, a soft  _ woosh _ of air breaths from the metal framing. He scowls, mentally tracing a line from the face of the vent to the floor below.

“Where’s this coming from?” Mac wonders aloud.

“Hell if I know,” Nat sighs. “Back downstairs?”

\-----

Back in the living room, their fruitless search wears on, and the trail wears thin. Thunder rolls against the roof, punctuating their conversation with the occasional quake in the walls. MacCready lights himself a smoke while Natasha and Deacon mull over the plant growth filling the fireplace. 

“Might be warmer in here if we light it,” Deacon prods.

“And set the whole place on fire?” Nat chuckles. “Yeah, that’ll make it warmer, all right.”

“There’s enough sawblades in here we can trim the weeds back, keep it contained,” Deacon coaxes.

“No,” Nat says quickly. “I don’t think they would like that.”

“ _ They? _ ” Deacon snorts. “Look at you, making new plant friends. Does this mean you’re gonna apologize to Diane and Petrice when we get ho-- back to your place?”

Something flips in his chest, like the weightless sensation just before tripping. MacCready peers over at them, crouched beside one another. Deacon’s hand trails off Nat’s shoulder. The look on her face says she heard it, too.

_ When we get home. _

The clap of thunder perforates the silence. 

“The  _ hydrangeas _ ,” Natasha says hastily, “need to learn that they’re not the only ones who live in the garden. And we’re not the only ones  _ here _ . So let’s leave the viney guys be.”

“Besides, we can’t go home to Diane and Petrice like that,” MacCready adds with a grin. “They’ll  _ know  _ we hacked up their second cousins or something.” 

He plucks a leather-bound book from the ground-- one Deacon had discarded earlier. He doesn’t make it past the first first vacant page; something underneath it grabs his focus.

Score marks drag across the floor. Long, angry scratches in the wood. They’re thin; barely there unless the light angles just right. Someone tried to buff them out. MacCready follows them to the bookshelf against the wall.

No, book _ shelves. _ A groove in the wood marks the space they’re pressed together. An edge where they could be pulled apart. Experimentally, he pries at the ridge.

_ Click. _

MacCready staggers back, readying his rifle. The others jerk to join him, pistols drawn.

The shelves glide apart with a soft  _ hiss _ . Brisk air seeps from the widening space between. MacCready sputters out a harsh cough. Something else leaks out, too: an fresh wave of that god awful stench. Something burnt. Something stale. Like meat gone rancid. It stings against his eyes. MacCready hides his nose in his elbow.

Livid red light bathes the room as the shelves peel away to reveal a new one. MacCready blinks rapidly, eyes adjusting to the strange new light. Something dark and humanoid lurks in the far back corner. MacCready fixes it in the sights of his rifle.

“Mac,” Nat tugs on his sleeve, breath grazing his ear. “ _ Look. _ ”

MacCready really wishes he hadn’t. “Oh god, is that…?”

It doesn’t look like a ghoul, or a human. Nobody should look like  _ that _ . Like a windchime of bones barely strung together by muscle and sinew. A hook pierces where a mouth should be. Rippled sheets hang around the sickly figure. Sickos still had some semblance of modesty as they hacked and slashed their victims to the bone. That’s what’s glowing now, MacCready realizes. The bones gleam against the harsh light. But the sheets are pulled back, pulled taut, pulled…

Pulled right off their victim.

“That’s...god…” Deacon fumbles for words.

“Skin,” Natasha speaks softly. “It’s...ghoul skin. They  _ skinned _ them.”

MacCready recoils from the scene. “ _ Why _ ?”

Something crinkles near his ear. MacCready scans the room behind them. Nothing. The crackling persists.

“Rads,” Nat explains, frowning at the geiger counter on her PipBoy. “The light’s giving off rads.” She tugs a white bottle from the belt at her hip, pouring out a pill for each of them. “Here. Got enough to pace it out if we need to be here for a bit.”

They take a beat alongside the rad-x, turning cheek to the grizzled corpse dangling behind them. The putrid stench isn’t so easy to hide from. The chilly bite in the air doesn’t leave them be, either. Mustering all the fortitude he could send to his stomach, MacCready forces himself to turn and face their macabre discovery. 

“Come on,” Nat urges. “Sooner we search, sooner we can shut these damn doors and stop soaking up rads.”

They inch forward cautiously, taking in the long metal tables that glisten slick and steely. MacCready wrinkles his nose. Some of them are  _ wet _ . 

His frown furrows deeper when he catches the glint from the walls: knives, glinting sharp as teeth. Serrated, curved, flattened, and every variation in between. Even a butcher’s blade or two. Beneath them lies a collection of glass vials, filled with fluids dark and viscous. At the heart of the lab rests a contraption of flasks linked together by winding tubes. 

MacCready grimaces. “Oh for the love of --  _ ugh. _ Really, with the funky science gizmos?!”

A mess of papers lay strewn before the beakers. Diagrams, drawings, furiously scribbled notes. Deacons rifles through them with a stony expression. 

Thunder drums against the roof. MacCready feels the shudder pulse through the house and beneath his own skin. “So that’s  _ one _ out of ten missing settlers. What do you think happened to the others?”

“I don’t know,” Natasha shakes her head. “I thought Children of Atom practically worshipped ghouls. One with the rads, and all that.”

“Our farmer friend said the world would be born anew in the light of Atom,” Deacon murmurs pensievely. He makes his way back to the spread of notes along the lab tables. “Remade from worthy flesh.”

“ _ Ghoul _ flesh,” Nat says. “So, what, you think they’re making lampshades and lounge chairs out of dead bodies? I’ve never seen a ghoul that had a plush backside. Or arms like mahogany. Or kneecaps like damned marble floors.”

“No,” Deacon agrees. “Doesn’t look like anything we’ve seen inside. Or outside.”

Mac swallows past the sting of acid at the back of his throat. “So...what if they’re _ in between _ ?”

Nat winces. “Oh god. Insulation?”

“Might be,” Deacon says grimly. “They’ve got diagrams here. Plans for the house. Blueprints. We already know they were renovating.”

Nat shivers. “Well, lesson learned: dead bodies don’t keep out the cold. It might as well start snowing in here.”

The quip comes with a brittle edge. MacCready wraps an arm around her, pulling his coat tighter to her chest. She quivers in his grasp, avoiding his gaze. He settles his chin against her hair and smirks at the faint scent of vanilla.

_ What’s she seeing now _ ? He wonders with an ache in his chest. Her eyes trail to the metal tables. All that steel, and the frigid air, must beckon back unpleasant memories. His imagination fills in the blanks that hers runs away with. MacCready reels Nat in closer for a moment, then plucks open the buttons on his overshirt. He slinks it off, and passes it her way, shifting to cover the tremor down his spine as the air bites at his open arms.

“How are you not cold, too?” Nat murmurs incredulously.

“Yeah, Bobby,” Deacon says softly, eyes flickering towards Mac. “Careful with those arms out like that.”

A rush of heat on Mac’s skin chases the chill away for a scarce second. Deacon drags his gaze down the bare of Mac’s arms, to the thin shirt hiding the lean panes of his chest, and then, finally to the dust of color on his cheeks. 

Nat snickers in his ear, tugging back his focus with a squeeze to his arm. “They  _ are _ nice. But you should keep your shirt.”

Mac shrugs back into the green sleeves, feeling the fire on his skin fade with Deacon’s drifting attention. 

Deacon thumbs through the crisp pages. “Maybe the cold helps with the...nevermind."

“What?” Nat tilts her head.

“Maybe it...uh, helps with the rot.” Deacon says reluctantly. “Wouldn’t want their little paradise slopping apart overnight.”

“Ghouls don’t usually do that,” Mac scowls. “At least not that quickly. But...I don’t know, they really picked them apart first.

“Well,” Nat meanders towards the door, “we’ve got maybe an hour before we lose the rest of our daylight. Don’t want to be poking around in this place with just a PipBoy. Are we busting open some walls, or what?”

A groan grates past Mac’s lips. 

“The families deserve to know what happened,” Nat coaxes. He takes her outstretched hand, twining his fingers through hers. The cool of her palm melts against his, tugging him along.

“Not sure I’d want to know if it was me,” Mac grumbles. Natasha eyes him skeptically. “Look, if this happened to either of you, I don’t want to hear about how they stuffed you into a nice corner in their fancy dining room. Gonna be too busy mashing up whoever did it into a fricken… I don’t know. Three bed, two bath, open concept.”

“Wow,” Deacon deadpans. “Gonna stretch our murderers that thin, huh?”

“This is disgusting,” MacCready heaves an exasperated sigh. “And I hate  _ all of it _ .”

Maybe not all of it. For one, Natasha’s hand warms in his. Her thumb smooths little circles on his skin that ground him against that awful, squishy feeling of vines underfoot as they trudge back through the house. 

And the other hand, the one that finds its way to the small of MacCready’s back to press an imprint of reassurance before sliding away. The one that drifts back to Deacon’s side soundlessly, like it never left.

That’s not so bad, either.

\-----

“God,” MacCready squints against the motes of dust that mill in the air. “Didn’t think it was possible to smell  _ worse _ in here.”

They tried their luck on the east side of the house, where sawdust and Deacon’s study of the diagrams indicated new construction. When their efforts bore no fruit, they moved on to the dining room, the vine-flooded chamber off the hallway, and the wall opposite the bookcase door in the living room. Now, a dozen jagged windows decorate the interior. The gaps seem to sneer back at them with teeth of broken drywall.

“Nothing,” Nat says, despondent. She tosses her hatchet to the floor. It drops against the invasive greenery with a muffled thump. She scowls through the fresh view into the foyer. Clouds of debris cloy in the air. The taste is gritty on his tongue, and leaves a sting something awful in MacCready’s throat.

“No dead bodies in there,” Mac agrees, sliding to a seat. “Hey, bookworm! Why don’t you take a swing?”

Conveniently, Deacon had recused himself from smashing through drywall for the purpose of further perusing the scribbles left behind by the house’s former resident crazies. 

Deacon doesn’t pay him any mind. Instead, he keeps flipping through the salvaged notes. Natasha’s PipBoy floods the pages in vivid green. With a pinch of annoyance, MacCready swipes them out of Deacon’s hands. 

“I’m not surprised you didn’t find bodies,” Deacon says, lighting himself a cigarette. “Well, you might have, as it turns out. Chewed them up into drywall dust by the sound of it.”

“What?  _ Ugh _ for the...why didn’t you say something sooner? Stuff’s been going up my nose all night!”

“It took me a while to get past the miles of self-aggrandizing ego stroking this guy was churning out to get to the murdery bits. Or, ‘freeing the righteous of their earthly restraints’ as they’re calling it these days.”

Deacon douses Mac’s simmering temper with a second cigarette, offered his way. Mac grabs it, muttering half-curses beneath his breath, but steadies his hand enough to let Deacon light it for him.

“According to their little manifesto,” Deacon continues, “they believed they could harvest a ghoul’s regenerative properties like a nice crop of tatoes. ‘Rebuild the world anew from worthy flesh’. They applied it to other things. Did pretty well with the plants, but they couldn’t really control them, either.”

“Explains the overgrowth.” Nat says, slipping down to sit between them. She holds her hand out, expectantly. For a second, Mac blinks and sees fingerprints blazing against her wrist in the glare of the PipBoy. Deacon slides a smoke between her outstretched fingers. When Mac blinks again, her arm’s receded into shadow. They sit, stewing in silence and smoke rings as the darkness deepens. MacCready glimpses Deacon’s lips pressed in the red-orange glow of cinders.

“There’s more, isn’t there?” Mac presses.

Deacon nods. “Next on their list was building materials, apparently. Inanimate objects. God, these nutjobs even have plans for a whole settlement.”

“Made out of dead ghouls?” Mac puffs incredulously.

“Good thing we shut it down when we did,” Nat says. “Sounds like they planned to kill a lot more people. One thing I can’t figure though: sounds like they were pretty proud of their little project. Why the fake exterior?”

“This was a splinter cell, kicked out of the club for drifting too far from the doctrine,” Deacon says, at last, setting aside the stack of nonsense. “This was meant to be their comeuppance. They go on and on about unleashing Atom’s power at the opportune moment and guarding against the unworthy.”

Exhaustion lays weary in his bones as Mac tilts his head back to rest against the wall. A second later, he shrugs away suddenly, glaring at his faint reflection in the polish of the wood. Wood made out of  _ ghoul dust _ .

“It didn’t work though,” Mac mutters shakily. “I mean, we just busted a bunch of holes in these walls. Not like they  _ grew  _ back.”

His reflection doesn’t look so convinced. Neither does Deacon. The shine of Pipboy angles off his raised brow. 

Thunder lashes overhead. The resounding boom smashes against the house like a boulder. MacCready jolts, flattening to the wall, pulse beating against his ribs. For a few seconds, the world through the windows sears with brilliant emerald light. Seconds later, it plunges into darkness once more. Mac chases after his breath, peeling slowly from the wall. 

Natasha’s laughter in his ear stands his hair on end. He flinches.

“Mac, it’s just me,” Nat murmurs, gently squeezing his arm. 

“Couldn’t see you,” MacCready grumbles.

“It’s okay to be scared,” Deacon's voice curls like the smoke that billows on his breath. Teasing. Toying with him. But...tentative. Earnest, even.“I mean, this _ is _ the stuff of nightmares we’re dealing with.”

“I’m not  _ scared _ ,” MacCready scoffs.

Something creeps from the shadows. MacCready tenses when familiar fingertips cross over his own. Just one brush, and they’re gone like ghosts. Deacon fixes his gaze on the opposite wall. 

“Speaking of nightmares,” Nat adds sullenly, “I guess we should try to get some sleep, huh? Don’t want to go bumping into anything in the dark.”

“Not helping,” he sighs into her hair, laying a kiss to the top of her head. He frowns. She’s still shivering like a leaf in a wild breeze.

Something scrapes against the roof. Long, and dragging, like fingernails.  _ The wind. It’s just the wind. _

MacCready grips Natasha tighter. When the rain rages against the glass with sudden vigor, and he jerks from the wall again, MacCready tugs Natasha into his lap and circles his arms around her. 

You know. Because she’s cold.

Natasha drifts into fitful sleep. MacCready’s eyes stay fixed to the gash in the wall to the foyer, tracing the edges of every broken bit by the flash of the lightning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sure that absolutely NOTHING bad will happen while they try to catch some Z's. :D
> 
> Also, really entertained myself with the idea of Mac being presented with both a cold Nat and a cold Deacon and deciding the only reasonable course of action is to just. Strip. Eyes emoji here.
> 
> If you read and liked it, feel free to feed the writer comments and kudos. Part three will be posted sometime soon!


	3. Deacon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The trio weather through the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fair warning: bring some butter cause this is a bit corny :D

Deacon doesn’t believe in ghosts. Really.

How many nights of half-sleep did he catch dozing on those old mattresses lining the dusty floor of the crypt in Old North Church? How many times did he lean against those great stone coffins, sit on them, tie his shoes on them? Not exactly the kind of reverence the dead are supposed to demand. But he never heard any hell for it. 

Maybe _that_ was the real reason sleep clung to him like a phantom in those years, dancing near enough to feel but not close enough to touch or taste. Just a hint. So he could remember it existed. But not to hold on to.

It was the dead people, all along. Not the midnight raids, or coursers on the warpath, or the dogged determination of the Brotherhood biting at their heels. No, just ghosts getting their digs in. Go figure.

Well. Maybe not. But it's no comfort _here_ , knowing the very walls themselves are graves for those who were sent to them far, far too soon.

MacCready bristled at Deacon’s lack of participation in their little deconstruction project. But, staring now, in the milling darkness, he wishes he didn’t see the sketches of ghouls, pulled apart. The drawings burn like afterimages, like he’d stared into a light too bright - something _no one_ was ever supposed to look at. Now he sees it again each time he blinks, no matter where he turns.

A world reborn from the flesh of the worthy. Built in blood and bone. Sick bastards.

Deacon didn’t tell the others about the page after that. The one that talked about the doors that knew their entrants, the floors that soaked in someone’s virtue by measure of their footsteps, the windows that stare into someone’s eyes and see their soul. Watching, weighing, memorizing. Like muscle memory. The whole house as a beating heart, studying those inside with every pulse. No one unworthy would ever tread upon the halls of Atom and live. 

God. Ten people _died_ for this bullcrap. 

Deacon licks his lips, then wishes he hadn’t. The chill settles deeper in his skin. He tugs Mac’s scarf tighter to his neck with a small smile. MacCready would tease him about the t-shirt again if he were...awake.

Deacon swallows beneath that piercing stare. Blue eyes pin him right against the wall. 

“Come over here already,” Mac pants, exasperated.

Come...over? MacCready and Natasha huddle together on the floor, a tattered blanket sheltering them from the cold. MacCready opens the edge of the blanket now, ushering to Deacon impatiently.

Deacon swallows. “I’m fine, Bobby.”

“Told you not to play coy,” Mac snipes. “You’re not being a hero by turning into an icicle. Get in here.”

Deacon lets out a careful, controlled exhale. Despite the barb, the logic is sound. Freezing to death, _is_ patently unhelpful. No argument there. Deacon shrugs from the wall. He slides beneath the blanket, failing to suppress the puff of relief that leaves his lips.

“See? Wasn’t so hard.”

Wasn’t so...hm.

MacCready’s exhale tickles the tip of his nose. They lay, face to face, chest to chest, parted by only sparse inches. Though the warmth seeps into his aching muscles, Deacon finds himself lying entirely, perfectly rigid.

And damn if MacCready doesn’t look wholeheartedly pleased with himself. The smirk doesn’t budge. Neither does the mischief in his eyes. Something beneath the covers, does, though. Deacon feels a flutter of abrupt panic. And then--

Hands, rough and weathered, but warm, fold against his own. Friction rubs his frigid fingers back to life. And then, the hands slow, digging in circles into the meat of his palms, dragging stiffness out from the roots of his knuckles to the tips of his fingers. Something drops in his chest when MacCready withdraws.

It’s his breath. The one Deacon forgot to take this whole time. The one that’s making way too much movement in his chest for MacCready not to notice. 

Deacon fumbles for cover. “You’re just using me for my body. Typical.”

“I don’t know. You’ve got some good stuff in there.” Two little taps graze Deacon’s temple. 

Well that’s...that’s...just…

Natasha mumbles groggily in her sleep. It stokes a small smile on his lips. Nat’s always been the creative type when it comes to saving the day.

Deacon peers past MacCready’s shoulder. “How’s...um, how’s Dostoyevsky over there?”

“You mean krasavitsa? Yeah, I know what that one means.”

On second thought, maybe he’d have been better off in the cold. Deacon schools his face into behaving, and forces himself to blink back at Mac. What’ll it be? Accusation? Jealousy? There’s a shiver running laps on Deacon’s spine, and it falters when their eyes meet. MacCready studies him with fond interest where Deacon thought to find a chill. Anything but...whatever sort of warmth is blooming on MacCready’s face. 

“You’re right,” Mac continues. “She _is_ beautiful. And she’s freezing. Nat hates being cold. It’s harder for her, I think, with what she’s been through.”

Of course she does. Side effects of cryostasis. Makes sense why it sets her on edge. Made sense, the way MacCready tucked her feet into the blanket that night Natasha fell asleep on Deacon’s shoulder.

There’s that mischief again, gleaming in MacCready’s eyes. “Help me warm her up.”

He’s _not_ asking. 

MacCready shuffles and shifts until Nat’s between them. Deacon feels her sleepy murmur thrum against his chest. She’ll shift about for a few seconds, make the surliest frown with her brows pinched together, and then her face will fade to calm like a quiet pond. Her little routine.

It shouldn’t surprise him. Or...maybe it should. Maybe he shouldn’t have soaked every inch of that night into memory. That one, single night that’s rooted him to these two like an anchor.

Even so, he knows from _experience_ Natasha’s the tactile type. 

So it shouldn’t steal his breath again when her arms wind around his chest and she tugs herself tighter to him, and buries her face against his heart that is definitely _not_ thumping like a minigun. 

Deacon feels MacCready watching him before he looks back up. When he does, he finds the mercenary flush against Natasha’s back, laying a feather-light kiss to her throat. Carefully. Intently. In the same manner his eyes soak in Deacon on her other side.

Yeah, Deacon forgets the breathing thing again. Just for a second.

Deacon lets his head drop to the floor. He sucks in a deep inhale.

Her damn hair smells like vanilla.

Natasha sighs against his collarbone. “ _Ya khochu chtoby ty byl tut._ ”

She’s just sleep-talking. Taking a break from her nightly demands for pasta and various cuisines from a bygone era to mumble words that send a new kind of thrill rushing through him. 

He’s mishearing her, anyway. _A Patriot’s Guide to Conversational Russian_ really didn’t cover situational phrases for when your friend invites you to share body heat, first with himself, and then with his girlfriend. And now you’re curled up on the floor of some macabre slaughterhouse for ghouls _cuddling_ so you don’t catch cold. 

_Jesus_. Deacon flinches. He swears he catches the barest edge of a smile on her face while she presses ice cold toes against his shins. 

She’s just cold. Really, _really_ cold. And she didn’t say it, not really, not _to_ him. Just against him. Strung together unwittingly. A sleepy slip of the tongue and ‘I’ and ‘want’ and ‘you’ and ‘here’ just happened to take shape in his brain even though there’s no way that matches what actually came from her lips. 

Deacon doesn’t speak Russian. Well, he knows how to ask where the bathroom is, and how to declare death to all the commies that could be hiding in there. And how to call someone beautiful and pretend he’s just...looking for the commies in the bathroom. _A Patriot’s Guide_ has its finer moments.

Deacon hazards a cautious half-glance towards MacCready. The coast is clear; Mac’s settled with his nose against Natasha’s neck, eyes shut, chest sliding through the deep breath of sleep. 

Good. So no one’s gonna notice, this time, that he’s full-on staring. Staring, because for the first time since they walked through the door to this awful place, Mac’s got his ease back. His face is gentle and calm and _young._ Hopeful. Happy. Mac lays with an arm slung over Nat’s side, resting against her stomach. He looks like he could take on the whole world.

Of course he does. Look who he has to hang onto. And look who’s looking out for _her._ Something ugly twists in Deacon’s stomach. An ache that’s old, festering. They’re the real thing, if he’s ever seen it. 

Deacon’s seen it. He had it. Once.

But now, he’s just the phantom, hovering for a hint of something that isn’t his to take. Hungry for that ghost of a feeling that belongs to someone else, for time he wants to steal, and touches he wants to covet. Oblivious to the fact that his time is long past, and he’s a sad and loathsome thing leeching the life out of those with joy left to spend.

It’s too much. He can’t want that. Can’t take that. Not from _them_. 

Deacon recoils, meaning to flee to the safety of the cold and lonesome corner. Natasha’s hands turn to claws against his collar, latching him in place. Protests tumble out of her in groggy murmurs. This time, Deacon doesn’t try to divine what they could mean. 

But he doesn’t leave the blanket, either. Deacon bobs against the surface of his own flooded mind, taking turns holding his breath and daring to think about those who sleep beside him.

**GONG.**

He doesn’t sleep long.

The chime of the grandfather clock shudders through Deacon’s bones. But it’s the gentle flutter of eyelashes against his neck that wrenches his eyes open. He feels Natasha sit up before he can see her. Her PipBoy blazes to life on her arm, dousing them in vibrant green. MacCready spreads his arms in a stretch with a creaky yawn. Slowly, Deacon rises, too. He squints, adjusting to the artificial glow from Natasha’s wrist.

She’s mesmerized by the screen, or still collecting her bearings from their rude awakening. Except she’s not blinking. Not moving. Not _breathing._ Hypnotized by the sight of her own arm. He can see the sharp outline of the screen reflected back against her eyes. Off-center. That’s not the wrist she’s staring at. The other one, then.

Then he sees it. 

Deacon grips her shoulder. “Nat you...don’t move, I’ll--”

“I know,” She says softly.

MacCready’s voice echoes back off the polished walls. “What the heck is that?!”

He reaches for her arm. Natasha shirks away.

“Don’t,” she cautions.

“ _Don’t?_ ” MacCready gapes at her.

Deacon fumbles for words that dry up in the back of his throat. Something about the _vine_ that’s snaking up Nat’s arm has Deacon a little torn between who’s camp he’s in. As they wait and watch on bated breath, the tendrils climb to her wrist. Spindly, spidery things. Deacon feels his stomach roil.

“Now might not be a great time to mention,” Nat says hesitantly, “but I think the plants are alive.”

Mac’s brows jump to his hairline. “Yeah, _alive_ is pretty normal for plants. _That’s_ not normal!”

“I mean alive like...sentient!”

Deacon musters his voice. “Those marks on your wrist…”

Nat elaborates reluctantly. “It’s been...talking to me.”

MacCready deflates, despondent. “You’ve been hearing things this whole time and didn’t think to say something?” He sulks between hur and fear, searching her face for answers. But Natasha stays focused on the vines wrapping around her arm. Deacon watches too, fixated, _nauseated_. The tendrils lengthen, then thicken like branches against her skin. 

“Not hearing things,” Nat murmurs, “feeling them.”

Not like branches at all. Like _fingers_. 

It’s not the first time he’s lost his breath tonight. But for a different reason entirely, Deacon finds the air banished from his lungs. 

Three, wiry, gnarled fingers tap a familiar pattern on Natasha’s wrist. _Follow me. I’ve got your back._

“Nat,” Mac stutters, “how does it _know_ that?"

It crawls to Deacon from the pages of severed limbs and sheets of skin and rambling, ravenous diatribe. The page after. The one he didn’t bother reading aloud. 

The whole house, watching, weighing, memorizing each of them as they moved from room to room. Studying. Analyzing. Deciding their worth. This whole time, they’d been looking for bodies while barely realizing they were _in_ one.

“Muscle memory,” Deacon pants.

“What?” MacCready blinks at Deacon in disbelief. 

**GONG.**

That last chime makes twelve. Silence settles over them like dust. Midnight. The pinnacle of darkness.

Seconds tick by. They watch the repetitive, insistent pattern, marked by the ivy wrapped around Natasha.

Tap. Tap. Tap. _Follow me. Follow me. Follow me._

Abruptly, the growth recoils. Dragging, slithering, sliding back across the floorboards, receding from the scarlet swirls in the marble floor of the foyer. The greenery flees to the staircase, leaving the room suddenly bare in its wake. For the first time, Deacon sees the knots in the polish of the wood. Dark, deep, heavy circles. As Deacon watches, they bore back into him, wide and watchful. 

They blink.

Something shudders through the walls. An electric current that races down Deacon’s spine and lights up his veins. His heartbeat kicks against his ribs. The chandeliers all simmer and flare to life in boiling, brilliant color.

The room runs red. Bloody, violent red, like the light from the lab hidden behind the bookcase. Something shreds against Deacon’s ears. His hands fly to cover them. Crackling, prickling, static noise. Like sheets of velcro tearing apart from one another. 

Like radiation, ripping right through them. The Geiger counter screams.

“Guys!” MacCready’s shout wrenches back his focus. Deacon watches in open-mouthed horror as MacCready staggers back from the hole in the wall. He watches, as the window to the foyer knits itself together. Piece by piece, the shattered bits of wood reach out to one another in a mass of swarming, wooden hands. They grasp against the empty air, climbing over each other until they connect and mold into one. But when the reconstruction is complete, the wall writhes all the same. Screaming faces pull against the paneling. 

MacCready steps backwards again, rifle aimed decisively.

“Mac,” Deacon yells, “Wait--”

**BANG.**

The shot soars through the wall, rocketing out the other side. Deacon watches the splinters spray in slow motion. For a few moments, the squirming settles.

MacCready shouts in pain. His rifle scatters across the floor. Jagged teeth erupt from the floorboards and sink into his ankles. The wood rends apart at the seams and gives way to long arms that drag claws down his back. MacCready sinks to his knees.

Deacon doesn’t think, doesn’t blink, doesn’t breathe. He lunges forward, seizes MacCready’s arm, and pulls him from the fray. Mac collides against his chest. It might’ve winded him, if Deacon had held on to any air in his lungs. Good thing he gave up any hope for that. As it is, it’s taking all he’s got to hang on to Mac. The floorboards ripple, like keys on a piano, chasing after the beat of Mac’s boots against the wood.

Mac tears away from Deacon, swiping his rifle from the floor. He spins around to fire and freezes rigid.

Twisting, howling faces shift in the grain of the wood. Ghouls crawl atop one another in a mess of serrated edges. Fresh foes cleave from every seam and corner: the wall, the floors, the ceilings, the plush sofa by the fireplace. Hands pull at the boundaries of the reformed walls, tugging the fibers taut. The only memory of the gashes Nat and MacCready had smashed there lays within the mangled faces shrieking back at them. If they’d forgotten prior tresspasses, MacCready’s bullet was a sure reminder.

From the corner of his eye, he watches the scarlet swirls in the marble bubble up. Stony hands claw their way towards them. The entire house quakes with a guttural roar. Raw rage, boiling beneath their feet.

All beneath the blaze of radiation.

Those bastards actually did it. They stole lives from innocents to give birth to _this_ fucking monstrosity. This living, breathing, teeming house that heals from radiation like ghouls do. 

That goes feral, like ghouls do.

Sudden sharpness slices at his heels; teeth snap shut on empty air a hair from Deacon’s feet. MacCready stays rooted solid, mouth agape, sweat seeping down his brow. The writhing mob rushes towards him. Deacon clamps a hand across MacCready’s arm, dragging him from the warpath. 

“There’s...so many,” MacCready pants faintly against Deacon’s chest. “They’re everywhere.”

Deacon’s stomach drops when he finds Mac’s fogged-over gaze. MacCready sways in his grasp, swiveling his rifle back towards the ripple in the floors. Deacon pushes the barrel back down.

“It’s only aggravating them.”

“I’m not doing this again!” MacCready growls vehemently. His sudden burst of vigor breaks Deacon’s hold. He rattles off the last three shots in his mag. Deacon winces, watching the particles shatter and recollect within the blink of an eye. Pulled back into place, as if by magnets. MacCready reloads.

Deacon tries again with an arm to his shoulder. “Bobby, if you’ve done _this_ before, we’ve gotta have a serious talk!”

Mac huffs indignantly. “They’re not taking any more of mine!”

MacCready still has that faded sheen to his gaze, the one that matches the uncharacteristic tremor in his hands. The one that Deacon knows, but doesn’t. He knows the lesson. Now, he knows Mac’s teacher, too. MacCready’s seeing them again now, in the feral faces tearing towards him. 

_Who did they take from you?_

Warm fingers weave through Deacon’s. Natasha repeats the message Deacon watched the vines scrawl inside her wrist. “Follow me!”

Deacon tugs MacCready into stride with them as they sprint for the staircase. The tangled vines part way for them when they reach it. The carpet runner curls with a hiss against their steps. It whips against their heels. Once, twice, Deacon nearly tumbles face-first, but MacCready’s grip hauls him upright. 

Their destination comes into view: Natasha leads the way, bolting for the heavy metal door left ajar where the madhouse ends and the bunker begins. Deacon shoves MacCready through after her. Something shifts at the edge of his gaze. Deacon jerks his sights back down the stairs. “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

He’s learning all sorts of things tonight: how long he can go without breathing. How to make a house _really_ come to life (helps to add a pop of color, preferably a good radioactive red). How, even though he thought his stomach was full up with dread, it turns out there was room for more.

As the house simmers with strange, grotesque shapes, he notices a few familiar ones are missing.

No more windows. And now, Deacon gets his last peek at what was left of the front doors, just as they’re boarded over in a swarm of malignant mahogany. 

“Deacon!” Nat grabs him again, yanking him into the chilly concrete of the bunker. The door slams shut behind him with a resounding _thud_.

“What the heck, what the heck, what the _fuck?!_ ” MacCready paces while knuckling fistfuls of his hair. 

“Bobby,” Nat soothes, rubbing a gentle hand down his arm.

“They -- They’ve got faces. They’re ghouls. The floor is ghouls. The walls are ghouls!”

“Not in here,” she murmurs. “It’s just us and good old, _normal_ concrete.”

“We just have to stick it out the rest of the night,” Deacon adds. He winces when his reassurance comes out off-key. An eerie quiet falls over them. No more screaming ghouls or geiger counter. Nat fishes out Rad-X and RadAway for each of them. She retrieves a pair of stimpacks, too. Deacon doesn’t have time to protest before she’s jabbing one into his shoulder. Deacon grimaces against the sting.

“Didn’t someone tell you to be careful with your arms out like that?” She teases, but the lightness in her voices feels fragile. When the slew of scratches down his arm begin to thin and fade, Deacon studies the chewed edges of her jeans. She managed to squirm away from _something_ ; he can’t see signs of any other wounds. 

She makes her way to MacCready next, who offers up his arm with a huff. Mac’s peppered from head-to-toe with bite marks and gashes. None too serious, Deacon finds with a swell of relief. They’d gotten out in time. _Natasha_ had gotten them out in time. Or, her new friend did.

“Why is the plant thing talking to you?” MacCready voices the question prickling on the edge of Deacon’s tongue.

“I don’t know,” Nat ponders. “It helped us, right? Led us up here. Maybe it was trying to warn us from the beginning.”

“When did it start?” Deacon cuts in.

“Outside, when I was doing my perimeter check. I thought I just imagined it. But,” Nat frowns thoughtfully, “I guess the root system might extend beyond the house itself.”

“Great,” MacCready flops against the wheezing mattress. “We’ve got a house that wants to eat us, and a crazy plant that’s gonna spread to who knows where. What does it want with you, anyway?”

“She’s worthy,” Deacon says.

“ _What?_ ” It’s Mac that utters his disbelief, but Deacon feels Nat’s sights set on him, too.

“The manifesto talked about how the house could tell if someone’s worthy,” Deacon explains. “All they have to do is walk through the door. We know what the house thinks of us. If it didn’t hate our guts already, punching a bunch of holes in the walls might’ve sealed the deal. But they started with the plants, first. Same rules might apply.”

“And if the root system _does_ spread further than the house,” Nat puzzles, “we were already walking on it when we were outside.”

“It’s got muscle memory. A way to know things about who’s treading on it. That’s how it knew about our little morse code, and how it knew Nat had a green thumb.” Deacon offers her a small smile. “Looks like all that time wrestling with Diane and Petrice paid off.”

Nat snorts incredulously. “Guess I’m the reigning garden champ after all. Gonna whip those two into shape when we get home.”

Even Mac manages a smirk. “Told you you were being too hard on yourself.”

_Thud._

The bunker trembles. They exchange glances of alarm. Trails of dust clatter from the ceiling. Deacon follows the trail. 

_Thud_. Deacon flinches from the wall. More debris sprinkles behind him. 

**THUD.**

A hairline fissure spreads through the concrete.

“We’re not staying in here tonight,” Deacon says quietly.

 **THUD**.

The crack deepens and spreads with every thunderous pulse.

“The door,” Mac mutters behind him. “We can make a break for the door. Spray ‘em down with gunfire. It’ll hold ‘em back enough for us to make a run for it.”

Deacon feels his blood grow icy. It burns with the cold fire of adrenaline. Now with every beat against the walls, he hears his own heart drum in his ears. “There’s no more door.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I watched it -- watched the house seal it up. No more doors, no more windows, just walls.”

“What about the back? They way you came in the first time?”

“If the front’s gone, that’s gone too,” Deacon’s the one pacing now. Pacing, so he can outrun the panic raising gooseflesh on his skin.

“Well, if this is how we go,” Nat sighs dramatically, “at least we’re in good company. Really glad you came to visit us, Deeks.”

Deacon coughs a sour laugh. “Yeah, no offense, but I’m starting to feel like that wasn’t my best choice after all.”

“Aw. Thought we had something special, the three of us. Too bad. Well, if you change your mind and want to keep this little party going…”

She hands something his way. A bright yellow canister, cool the touch, with a long metal nozzle, bent at a right angle. Blowtorches. The pair they’d found earlier. The sight lights a spark in Deacon’s chest. Focused fire might be the only thing with a shot at outpacing the radioactive regen.

Natasha grips its twin and saunters over to Mac. “Watch our backs while we burn our way out of here?”

Mac tilts a smile her way. “Only if we come back during the day to light up the rest of it.”

“Deal,” Nat offers him a hand, and pulls MacCready to a stand. When she peers over her shoulder towards Deacon, MacCready leaves a kiss against her neck. Natasha’s eyes flutter. Mac’s pierce Deacon right through.

“What do you say, Deeks?” Natasha drawls.

Quick death now, or a slow one later, it seems. Either alone, or likely at the hands of these two. At least the slow death might feel sweeter. 

“Well,” Deacon sighs for effect, “I had this whole thing planned for my last moments on the face of the earth. I was gonna make a speech and everything. But, you two are _really_ hard to say no to.”

\-----

They erupt from the bunker armed with fire and fury. Natasha takes the lead, with Deacon at her shoulder, giving hell to the biting floorboards, the groping arms splitting off from the bannister, and the snapping jaws of the steps beneath their feet. The blowtorches blaze to life with a ripping roar. Electric blue flame cleaves their path through the carnage. The shrill shrieks morph to agonized wailing, breaking like glass against Deacon’s ears. All the while, MacCready backs them up with his rifle, picking off the vengeful few that still tear towards them. 

Deacon dares a glance behind them. He wishes he hadn’t. A path of fleshy paste lies in their wake. His eyes sting. He blinks away rapidly. A smell assaults his senses, somehow _worse_ than the stench that lingered before. Not just dead, dismembered ghoul. _Burnt_ dead, dismembered ghoul. MacCready swallows a half-curse behind him. Deacon gags back his revulsion and forces himself to turn again.

“Maybe don’t light _me_ on fire!” Mac grumbles as he reloads his rifle.

Nat shoos away his accusation with a wink. “It’s not my fault you’re smokin’.”

“Better crispy then dead, Bobby,” Deacon reminds him. 

“This is the worst thing we’ve ever done,” MacCready groans.

“Yeah, let’s save that can of worms for another day,” Deacon coughs a laugh. “Almost there!”

The freshly-formed wall where the front door once dwelled is all that bars their way. The wooden faces shrivel and crumple beneath the heat of the flame. Deacon watches the knots in the wood melt and drip in the grain. No more eyes watching. No more teeth tearing form the edges. The deep, burgundy polish fades to meaty pink. The wall peels away like dead skin, flaking to a heap of ash at their feet.

They pour out of the house and into pouring rain. Dimly, between the race of his own pulse and the surge of adrenaline in his body, Deacon feels MacCready seize his hand and yank him into a sprint. Deacon lets the momentum take him. His legs seem to remember how to work well enough on their own. His mind is elsewhere, cast back behind him as he steals one last glance at the yawning grave they’d burned straight through.

The gap remains, flickering with flame around its edges. As he watches, it shifts into a wide, open mouth that sends a warbling wail echoing into the heavens loud enough to drown the clang thunder. The cries chase after them for miles, long after the house itself is swallowed by the darkness and the hills, long after the downpour soaks them through, long after Deacon’s run out of breath from running. Somewhere, in between rugged meadows and the stack of a familiar cityscape on the skyline, the screaming fades alongside the storm. Faint pastels blot out the stars in the sky. The sun edges past the horizon.

“Mac,” Nat murmurs softly. Deacon peers her way. She’s on Mac’s other side, hand held in his, fingers woven tightly through. Just the way Mac’s holding onto Deacon. There’s a fresh slice across her cheek. Something they’ll need to see to, when they get home.

“What?” Mac asks her hoarsely.

“We’re okay. You can let go now.”

“I’ll let go when we get home,” Mac grumbles, tightening his grip.

Maybe this is the start of that slow death. Maybe it starts here, with Mac’s hand gripping Deacon’s like a vice. With worrying over Nat’s every little scratch. With helplessly yearning for his spot on their couch. Nevermind the coffee stain that Nat tried to hide by flipping a cushion, or the haphazard job Mac did sewing the stuffing back in. God, it’s a good couch.

And maybe this is a good way to go. Into a blaze of fire, or the rising sun, or the gentle pass of body heat. Whatever they’re leading him too, at least it’s warm. 

\----

“Can’t sleep?” Natasha slumps to a seat beside him on the sofa. Between her palms, she cradles a steaming mug of amber liquid. Sleepy tea, she calls it. Mac calls it leaf juice. 

“Can’t imagine why,” Deacon murmurs.

“Yeah, us either,” Nat sighs. Bare feet pad against the wooden floor. Sure enough, MacCready emerges from the hall a moment later. He slides to a seat on Deacon’s other side, propping his legs up against the coffee table.

“Do you think Preston believed a word we said?” Nat ponders.

“No, but you scare him,” MacCready comments with a yawn.

Nat winces. “God, I have made that man’s life so distressing.”

Deacon nudges her shoulder. “Aw, but look how self-aware you are!”

“Hey, all that matters is he listened, and now that place is ashes in the dirt.” MacCready lights himself a cigarette. Deacon passes on his offering, instead, taking a moment to drink in their nighttime rituals. Nat has her tea. Mac has his smoke. Nat smoked earlier, but it didn’t work. Now they’re on to last-ditch efforts for a hope of sleep.

Deacon, for his part, has carefully studied the space above their mantle for any signs of arms, teeth, and faces. None of those yet. Inevitably, his eyes did droop the collection of keepsakes above the fireplace, and his mind found other mires to tangle in. Keenly, he feels eyes against his cheek. He peers at Natasha.

“So, can you talk to plants now, or what?”

“ _Deacon._ ” She rolls her eyes.

“Just wondering if your _budding_ friendship paid off. I’m trying to find the silver lining here.”

MacCready graces him with a chuckle. Deacon feels it rumble against his shoulder. 

“Does it matter?” Nat replies. “Diane and Petrice still won’t listen. They think they own the place.”

“I’ve got faith in you,” Deacon grins. “Hard not to when your green thumb was enough to impress the undead ghoul vines.”

“I’ve barely managed to keep anything alive. And the things I have won’t grow where they’re supposed to.”

“You’ll get there.”

“Yeah,” Nat offers him a small, secretive smile. “We all will.”

Deacon blinks back at her, stunned silent for a moment. Those were words he shared with MacCready, that night he came to visit and she fell asleep against him, and then _on_ him. Words Mac spoke while Natasha was decidedly _asleep_. 

Right?

“What do you think it’s doing right now?” MacCready’s pondering pulls him back to present. “I mean, the house burned down, but we didn’t dig up those roots.”

“If I had to guess?” Deacon smirks. “Slowly creeping over the whole world and planning the demise of mankind, once and for all.”

“Yeah, sorry Deeks,” Mac sighs. “We’re crashing here with you tonight. Just in case Diane and Petrice decide to switch sides or something.”

Deacon fixes his face. Carefully. He swallows.

“I suppose. As long as you don’t snore.”

“I don’t snore!”

“That one does,” he nudges Nat again. She’s gone quiet. Pensieve. He watches her, watching him, and feels the gears turning. 

A frown curls down the corners of her mouth. Deacon follows her gaze to the blanket strewn across his legs. His toes poke out at the end. 

Nat shifts forward, tucking the blanket beneath his feet. MacCready leans back, dozing at his shoulder. The scents of cigarettes and nicotine and vanilla fog over Deacon’s mind.

A slow death. But a sweet one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed this quirky little story! If you did, feel free to leave a comment or kudos! I'm @adventuresofmeghatron on Tumblr if you wanna see me yell about Fallout and writing. Thank you for reading <3


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